IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/cposxx/v37y2016i2p113-128.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Nudge or nuzzle? Improving decisions about active citizenship

Author

Listed:
  • Graham Room

Abstract

In recent years ‘nudge’ has come into fashion as a form of policy intervention, under the inspiration of behavioural economics. It has encouraged policy analysts to move away from models of the ‘rational actor’ and instead to start from consumers, clients and citizens as they actually are. Nevertheless, nudge raises larger questions about public policy and the relationship between government and the citizen. This paper takes critical stock of nudge, offers an alternative in terms of ‘nuzzle’ and lays out the very different standpoint on policy to which this points. In doing so, it also puts in question the disciplinary paradigms which underpin ‘nudge’ in the scientific literature, and their underplaying of the social and institutional context of individual behaviour. It offers a perspective on public policy as providing security and supporting creativity: with government under critical scrutiny by citizens, rather than vice versa.

Suggested Citation

  • Graham Room, 2016. "Nudge or nuzzle? Improving decisions about active citizenship," Policy Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(2), pages 113-128, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:cposxx:v:37:y:2016:i:2:p:113-128
    DOI: 10.1080/01442872.2015.1115829
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01442872.2015.1115829
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/01442872.2015.1115829?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:cposxx:v:37:y:2016:i:2:p:113-128. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/cpos .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.